West Virginia Fires Back At Bob Huggins With Scathing Rebuttal After Basketball Coach Demanded Reinstatement

Bob Huggins' time at West Virginia may not be over just yet. Probably, but maybe not.

The 69-year-old college basketball coach claims that he did not resign from the university in wake of an arrest for drunk driving. He wants to return to his role with the Mountaineers, immediately.

His attorney, David A. Campbell, sent a letter to school president E. Gordon Gee on Friday that demands his client be reinstated. Huggins threatened to sue. West Virginia has since replied, confused.

Huggins' resignation was announced on June 17, after he took over the program in 2007.

Not long thereafter, his daughter issued a scathing statement toward her father's then-former school.

And then it got a little bit messy. Huggins, even though he was supposedly not with the program, and the boosters surrounding the program were reportedly pulling some strings behind-the-scenes.

As a result, the Mountaineers decided to promote from within and name an interim coach.

Huggins was very involved in the re-recruitment of one of the top players in the transfer portal.

That was at the end of June.

Bob Huggins wants his job back.

Now, on the second weekend of July, Huggins and his legal team say that he never actually stepped down from his role.

According to Campbell, the university announced Huggins' resignation "based on a text message from Coach Huggins' wife" that she sent to deputy athletic director Steve Uryasz.

The text, which was sent from an email address associated with June Huggins, read:

Please accept this correspondence as my formal notice of resignation as WVU Head Basketball Coach and as notice of my retirement from West Virginia University, effective immediately.

The message was sent via iPhone. It was sent to Uryaz's email address.

Athletic director Wren Baker responded an hour later and accepted the resignation.

West Virginia is pushing back on Bob Huggins' claims.

The school says that Huggins met with the basketball players and staff "to announce that he would no longer be coaching the team."

The meeting took place on June 17.

West Virginia will not be reinstating Huggins. Its response picks apart Campbell's letter point by point.

West Virginia's account directly contradicts the letter from Campbell, which states:

Coach Huggins never signed a resignation letter and never communicated a resignation to anyone at WVU. Accordingly, the WVU public comments are not only false, but appear to be an after-the-fact attempt to remedy WVU’s breach of the Employment.

Campbell said that Huggins' contract required the coach to send a notice in writing through very specific means: a notice in writing by registered or certified mail to the athletic director and university general counsel. A text message from Huggins' wife, in the eyes of the Hall of Fame coach and his attorney, does not meet that requirement.

Although Campbell's letter threatens legal action, it says that is not the goal. Huggins "does not desire litigation. Rather, he is simply looking for the correction of a clear breach of his employment agreement with WVU."

Essentially, Huggins wants to return to the sideline. If that does not happen, then legal action will follow. It sounds more like a threat than a legitimate attempt to avoid lawsuit.

Neither Huggins nor his attorney have responded to West Virginia's rebuttal.